


The Wait

by orphan_account



Series: After Crucible [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:03:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post breath ending, round 2.</p><p>Shepard is stranded on Earth while the Normandy is MIA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wait

The Loughton apartment Hackett assigned Shepard was large but it was so thoroughly filled with the past lives of ghosts – clothes and photographs and handwritten notebooks and dolls and dirty dishes and little bits of trash in small garbage pails – that it constricted around her, so tight at times she could barely breathe. 

“Terrible thing,” one of the neighbours had said when she first arrived, his eyes still wide enough with shock that white rimmed the green of his irises, “We were running with the family that lived there – you know, running from the Reapers – and the next thing we knew, _bam!_ , they were all just a smear on the road, just like that.”

He didn't stay too long; just gathered together all the pieces of his life that he could fit into his backpack, smiled at Shepard as he passed her en route to somewhere less battle scarred, and bid her goodnight. 

It would be three days before she slept for more than a few minutes here, a half hour there.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Then:

The sun was smiling on Shepard, soft and soothing, and she blossomed into the feeling like a morning glory. Everything has attained a level of just-rightness – the warmth, the air, the crisp and clean breezes wafting over from the ocean – and London was aglow with life and happiness and giddy, giddy security; the kind that spread like a virus and made everyone ignore that their bodies were just flimsy networks of bone and flesh and blood in favour of feeling like they were invincible; their mortality infinite; the goodness and honesty of their lives guaranteed. 

Earlier that morning, Shepard had shed her worries, fears, and failures like an old skin, leaving them on the charred, bloodstained streets behind her for someone else to pick up and analyse while she traipsed off to enjoy the nuances of pleasantness. Now, she lay atop a small, green hill dotted with pinprick yellow and blue flowers, so many that it was like they were in the throes of conquest, doggedly marching up to claim the crown at its peak. She wore a long, red dress the colour of her hair, her feet were bare, and she wasn't alone. 

All around her lay her friends, her family, each as whole and euphoric as she was.

All around her they remained collapsed together on the cool, cool grass, watching as the stars emerged from behind the shroud of sunlight, watching as the sky burned pink and orange again at dawn.

It was all gone in the morning. Shepard woke up cold and alone and callused from carrying so much of the universe in the palms of her hands, wondering when her subconscious had grown so cruel. Nightmares she could power through but sweet dreams infected her with a longing that lingered eternal.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Three weeks had passed since the Reapers were rendered obsolete but it didn't look like anyone told London. Most people still kept to their homes, leaving only for things like food and medicine and treatment for their wounded bodies and traumatized minds; the few who still lingered in the streets were there to help their fellow survivors even though the wounded had been swept up and taken away weeks prior and all they found amidst the rubble was death, death, more death. Soldiers who'd survived the assault were now facing equally insurmountable odds against black metal corpses that rose like monoliths above the fallen skyline, firm and solid as if they were part of the earth, and each day was still marred by the harsh noises of a fire fight while they tried to break them down.

The air was terrible; the ashes of the burning metropolis were so fine that they hung in it instead of settling on the ground. For every minute Shepard spent outside, she'd spend an hour coughing ash up later, the taste of it never far from the back of her throat. Worse, though, were the flies. Clouds of them. Black houseflies, blue blowflies, striped flesh flies, and tiny little fruit flies, each one of them spoiled for choice and plump with carrion. 

She went out every day. Her old teammates did too, the ones who weren't lost with the Normandy, but Loughton was far enough from London that they didn't encounter each other, which Shepard thought was for the best. Nobody ever recognized her. Whether it was because of the ghastly state of her face, all jagged scars and still-healing burns, or because their minds were understandably elsewhere, or because everyone expected her to be up amongst the Fifth Fleet and not wandering the streets every bit as lost as they were didn't really matter. She liked the anonymity, the freedom it came with. 

When people asked, she told them her name was Ashley. She hadn't intended to wear her lost comrade like a disguise but she didn't think to come up with a pseudonym until it was too late, and then only _Ashley_ came to mind. Every time someone called out to her, _Hey Ashley_ , or _How're you feeling, Ash_ she felt guilt rise and fall through her but that was fine. It was easy, too easy, for her to fall into step with the people of Britain and that guilt reminded her that she wasn't a civilian, that their pain wasn't her pain, that she was separate even as she held their children in her arms and pretended to know what London had been like before. 

Only some of the people who remained in the area were young. Most of them were older, too tired, too stubborn, too ready to die to flee with everybody else. They liked seeing Shepard around, finding purpose in checking up on her, in asking how she slept. As if they expected honesty instead of a cheerily faked _pretty well, considering_. 

One couple greeted her every morning with a cup of coffee and the words, “Just remember, you're still standing.” She hated those words. It never mattered how innocently they were packaged, they were always delivered to her as a consolation prize for failing to win as completely as she could have. Victory, she believed, was best measured in the number of people still breathing beside and behind her and there was none of that for her to claim, not yet anyway, not while the streets she walked were filled with so much more death than life, and still more gloom than hope. 

Of course she never told them that. Instead, she would take the coffee with a smile, thank them, and tell them to keep safe. They always did keep safe because they never left the little bench by the little patch of grass, except for when they needed to sleep in their quaint little home that had, miraculously, survived untouched.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

She was standing in a field of shattered asphalt, staring up at the exposed lens of a Reaper, bracing herself against the ominous way that the flames made it glow red, when a call came through on her communicator.

It was Hackett. “Hold your position,” he said. “We're sending a Mako to pick you up.”

Hackett had left Earth shortly after he confirmed that Shepard was awake and whole, certain to survive and prepared to stand firm even without her crew to breathe life into her. He offered to keep her updated on the Alliance's efforts but she declined. The only thing she wanted to hear from him was that they'd found the Normandy, that it was no longer MIA. Nothing else. And he had obliged. 

“They're alive,” she said, the words like syrup in her throat, too sweet to swallow down. “Tell me that you're telling me they're alive.” 

“Someone's alive. Our radars are picking up faint communication waves from a nearby system, they bear the Normandy's signature. We've got a lot of people working on magnifying the signal. Fortunately, it seems that the Normandy's also doing what they can to strengthen their broadcast. We're bringing you to the main ship so you'll be here when we establish contact.” 

“Thank you, sir,” she said, her voice strained, still choked with emotion. Up until then, she hadn't allowed herself to place faith in the Normandy's survival. It wasn't because she doubted their ability or their endurance or their stubborn determination to succeed in spite of massive odds against them, but because sometimes acceptance was more healing than hope. And she knew that whether they were dead or whether they had lived, she didn't have the luxury of breaking. 

She was Commander Shepard.

So she danced around her own fears like a ballerina on a minefield, careful not to lose her footing, careful not to light herself up until she crackled and burned and became one with the bitter London air. 

When the Mako arrived she slid in wordlessly and nodded at the driver. He was young, she noticed, his eyes every bit as wide as those of the man who'd watched his neighbours die, and he didn't acknowledge her at all beyond advancing the vehicle as soon as she was secure in her seat. 

The distance to the shuttle was long, and she slept through it all.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

There were too many people on Hackett's ship. Too many whole, put-together, clean people. Too many survivors who'd witnessed thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people die in big bursts of laser flame and therefore had the ability to comfort themselves with things like _at least they went quick_ and _at least they died fighting_.

They greeted her with salutes, called her _ma'am_. Some of them asked her how things were on the ground, genuinely concerned; others simply shook her hand and resumed their duties; others still recounted stories they'd heard about her, asked her to distinguish truth from fiction. Progress on reestablishing communications with the Normandy was going slow so she indulged them, albeit with a halved heart. 

By day, she worked as a dispatcher in the communications room, answering and transferring calls, running triage on the crises she fielded despite struggling to tick anyone's report off as being _trivial_. When she answered the phone she said, “Fifth Fleet, this is Ashley,” and despite knowing some of the voices and names that came through, nobody seemed to recognize her. 

By night – what passed for it on the starship, anyway – she curled up in the same chair she'd sat in all day and she slept reasonably well. Hackett advised the entire crew that anyone who woke her without cause would face repurcussions, and so there she remained for her first two nights on the ship.

On the third night, Hackett woke her up with a gentle clearing of his throat. One, two. _Ahem, ahem_. And as she opened her eyes to see him staring at her with new life colouring his face, she knew that they'd made contact and felt every cell in her body swell with a bubbly cocktail of relief and anticipation and pure, pure happiness. 

“We've got them on hold while we test the connection's integrity,” he said. “They're also waiting to be briefed, can I assume you'd like the honour?”

“Yeah,” Shepard said, her voice breathy and low. “As far as assumptions go that one's pretty fair.” 

Hackett led her away from her terminal towards the private quantum entanglement comm room. She paid attention to nothing around her, her eyes locked ahead on the curvature of the door, on the lines that would part for her and let her back into the lives of her crew. 

He stopped a few steps away, turned to face Shepard. “We turned the cameras off as a precaution, you can power them back up whenever you're ready,” he said. “Take your time.”

Shepard nodded, flowed into the room as though it itself was the Normandy, and stopped suddenly, sharply, inches away from the two blue holograms that were staring unblinkingly forward, forever at attention. 

_They look worse than I do_ , she thought, and she longed to reach out and touch them, run her fingers along the curve of their jaws, tell them it would be okay. Both Kaidan and Garrus were wearing old injuries and new ones in bruising that coloured them like husks. Their civvies hung off of them, loose from weight loss. They held themselves up with immense strain, and Shepard knew it was taking all their determination to steady their bodies against the tremors of exhaustion rippling through them. 

But there was hope about them too; so, so much hope that Kaidan's lips curled unbidden and Garrus' mandibles twitched, almost to the beat of Shepard's heart. Watching them, she was flooded with the realization of just how much she missed them, of just how deeply she needed them by her side, of just how much she wanted to thank them for surviving. 

She stepped forward, turned on the camera, waited. 

“Shepard...,” said Garrus.

“Shepard!” said Kaidan.

“If this is your idea of punctuality,” said Shepard, smiling so wide that it hurt, “I'm going to have to start running a tighter ship.”


End file.
